Firefox’s selective tab restoration after a crash is a handy feature, but if you’re suffering repeated crashes for whatever reason, then being told “Well, this is embarrassing” every single time can get really wearing. Here’s how to make it go away.
Ideally, I’d have liked to find a way to customise that too-clever-by-half message, but I couldn’t spot any obvious way of doing that (share one if you have it in the comments). However, you can tell Firefox not to offer the session restore option at all, which can be a reasonable trade-off if you don’t routinely have dozens of tabs open at once.
To make that change, enter
about:config
and click through the “Here be dragons” warning (another example of Firefox being a tad too clever). Use the filter to find the
browser.sessionstore.resumefromcrash
flag, right click, and select Toggle to switch it off.
Wobble
September 29, 2009 at 1:50 PM
That’s strange, I’ve never received that message.
Report PermalinkElly Hart
September 29, 2009 at 4:54 PM
Me neither.
Report PermalinkRodney Fiddaman
September 29, 2009 at 7:09 PM
You’re lucky then. Mine crashes every time I try to open a PDF file. I guess I really should look at that!
Report PermalinkMichael
July 2, 2010 at 9:36 AM
I get this error all the time.
They should stop being so embarrassed about it, and actually fix it.
Report Permalinkpoedgirl
September 29, 2009 at 3:20 PM
It can be pretty annoying – especially since now my home PC seems to want to crash Firefox about every hour. No matter what pages I have open, disabled all extensions and plugins, still does it.
Report PermalinkNil
September 29, 2009 at 3:29 PM
I’d like to turn it off but I actually have lots of tabs open at a time. The strange thing is, I get that message even when Firefox doesn’t crash.
Report PermalinkI close a Firefox windows with no tabs open and occasionally it tells me it can’t restore the blank tab when I open it again.
Jini
October 2, 2009 at 5:42 PM
wow, thanks a lot!
mine also shows the message, even when firefox didn’t crash. I get the message every time i open up firefox. Even when i closed without tabs open . . .
i also have this weird things, then when i close firefox without any tabs open, and start it up later, it opens up with tabs :S know how to fix this problem too maybe ?
Report PermalinkSelavn
November 4, 2009 at 6:22 PM
I need the fix but had no browser.sessionstore.resumefromcrash entry. So it would be of additional help if you could include those needed steps.
Until you, do, I’m going to tinker around and hopefully figure it out.
Report PermalinkKenny
November 9, 2009 at 5:04 AM
Does not work
Report PermalinkKenny
November 9, 2009 at 5:08 AM
Ok, I figured it out. Type:
Report Permalinkbrowser.sessionstore.resume_from_crash
Zack
December 1, 2009 at 11:43 AM
I to have the problem of this error message popping up whenever FireFox closes, crash or not, actually I have very few problems with it crashing. But I do have a FireFox problem I have been unable to fix, whenever I close (on purpose, or “accidentally”)lke accessing it with a link from my mail package (Thunderbird), I cannot reenter FireFox without rebooting the system. This, to say the least, is very frustrating. I can leave it open in the background, but my fickle finger movements (and my mouse is not helping either), but that of course is NOT an ideal situation. HELP!
Report Permalinkpete
July 7, 2010 at 6:16 PM
Its pathetic that Firefox posts the message about how embarrassed they are each time Firefox crashes. They should stop posting that sentence and actually become proactive to fix the issue that is causing the crash. They need to show some responsibilty and actual concern instead of telling me they are embarrassed each time it happens.
Report Permalinkmartin gugino
August 4, 2011 at 2:58 PM
thanks for the info. I will give it a shot.
Report PermalinkBruce Korb
October 15, 2011 at 2:27 AM
Rats. When I boot up from a shut down, I *WANT* Firefox to come back up with the same pages. I was hoping I could get it to do this without having to click, ‘proceed’ every time. It seems Firefox takes the SIGTERM signal as an error instead of a shutdown request.
Report Permalink